Chapter 12: The Cross and the Soul Life
God has made full provision for our
redemption in the Cross of Christ, but He has not stopped there. In that Cross
He has also made secure beyond possibility of failure that eternal plan which
Paul speaks of as having been from all the ages "hid in God who created all
things". That plan He has now proclaimed "to the intent that now unto the
principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known
through the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose
which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Eph. 3:9-11).
We have said that the work of the Cross has two
consequences which bear directly upon the realizing of that purpose in us. On
the one hand it has issued in the release of His life that it may find
expression in us through the indwelling Spirit. On the other hand it has made
possible what we speak of as `bearing the cross'; that is, our co-operation in
the daily inworking of His death whereby way is made in us for the
manifestation of that new life, through the bringing of the `natural man'
progressively into his right place of subjection to the Holy Spirit. Clearly
these are the positive and the negative sides of one thing. Equally clearly we
are now touching more particularly on the matter of progress in a life lived
for God. Hitherto in dealing with the Christian life we have placed our main
emphasis upon the crisis by which it is entered. Now our concern is more
definitely with the walk of the disciple, having especially in view his
training as a servant of God. It is of him that the Lord Jesus said:
"Whosoever doth not bear his own cross, and come after me, cannot be my
disciple" (Luke 14:27).
So we come to a consideration of the natural man
and the `bearing of the cross'. To understand this we must, at the risk of
being tedious, go back once more to Genesis and consider what it was that God
sought to have in man at the beginning and how His purpose was frustrated. In
this way we shall be able to grasp the principles by which we can come again to
live in line with that purpose.
The True Nature Of The Fall
If we have even a little revelation of the
plan of God we shall always think much of the word `man'. We shall say with
the Psalmist, "What is man, that thou art mindful of him?" The Bible makes it
clear that what God desires above all things is a man -- a man who will be
after His own heart.
So God created a man. In Genesis 2:7 we learn
that Adam was created a living soul, with a spirit inside to
commune with God and with a body outside to have contact with the
material world. (Such New Testament verses as 1 Thessalonians 5:23 and Hebrews
4:12 confirm this threefold character of man's being.) With his spirit Adam
was in touch with the spiritual world of God; with his body he was in touch
with the physical world of material things. He gathered up these two sides of
God's creative act into himself to become a personality, an entity living in
the world, moving by itself and having powers of free choice. Viewed
thus as a whole, he was found to be a self-conscious and self-expressing being,
"a living soul".
We saw earlier that Adam was created perfect --
by which we mean that he was without imperfections because by God -- but that
he was not yet perfected. He needed a finishing touch somewhere. God had not
yet done all that He intended to do in Adam. There was more in view, but it
was as yet in abeyance. God was moving towards the fulfillment of His purpose
in creating man, a purpose which went beyond man himself, for it had in view
the securing to God of all His rights in the universe through man's
instrumental in this? Only by a co-operation that sprang from living union
with God. God was seeking to have not merely a race of men of one blood upon
the earth, but a race which had, in addition, His life resident within its
members. Such a race will eventually compass the downfall of Satan and bring
to fulfillment all that God has set His heart upon. It is that that was in
view with the creation of man.
Then again, we saw that Adam was created neutral.
He had a spirit which enabled him to hold communion with God; but as man he was
not yet, so to speak, finally orientated; he had powers of choice and he could,
if he liked, turn the opposite way. God's goal in man was `sonship', or, in
other words, the expression of His life in human beings. That Divine life was
represented in the garden by the tree of life, bearing a fruit that could be
accepted, received, taken in. If Adam, created neutral, were voluntarily to
turn that way and, choosing dependence upon God, were to receive of the tree of
life (representing God's own life), God would then have that life in union with
men; He would have realized `sonship'. But if instead Adam should turn to the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he would as a result be `free' to
develop himself on his own lines apart from God. Because, however, this latter
choice involved complicity with Satan, Adam would thereby put beyond his reach
the attaining of his God-appointed goal.
The Root Question: The Human Soul
Now we know the course that Adam chose.
Standing between the two trees, he yielded to Satan and took of the fruit of
the tree of knowledge. This determined the lines of his development. From
then on he could command a knowledge; he `knew'. But -- and here we come to
the point -- the fruit of the tree of knowledge made the first man
over-developed in his soul. The emotion was touched, because the fruit
was pleasant to the eyes, making him `desire'; the mind with its reasoning
power was developed, for he was `made wise'; and the will was strengthened, so
that in future he could always decide which way he would go. The whole fruit
ministered to the expansion and full development of the soul, so that not only
was the man a living soul, but from henceforth man will live by the
soul. It is not merely that man has a soul, but that from that day on the
soul, with its independent powers of free choice, takes the place of the spirit
as the animating power of man.
We have to distinguish here between two things,
for the difference is most important. God does not mind -- in fact He intends
-- that we should have a soul such as He gave to Adam. But what God has set
Himself to do is to reverse something. There is something in man today which
is not just the fact of having a soul, but which constitutes a living by the
soul. It was this that Satan brought about in the Fall. He trapped man into
taking a course by which he could develop his soul so as to derive his very
life from it.
We must however be careful. To remedy this does
not mean that we are going to cross out the soul altogether. You cannot do
that. When today the Cross is really working in us, we do not become inert,
insensate, characterless. No, we still possess a soul, and whenever we receive
something from God the soul will still be used in relation to it, as an
instrument, a faculty, in a true subjection to Him. But the point is, Are we
keeping within God's appointed limit -- within the bounds set by Him in the
Garden at the beginning -- with regard to the soul, or are we getting outside
those bounds?
What God is now doing is the pruning work of the
vinedresser. In our souls there is an uncontrolled development, an untimely
growth, that has to be checked and dealt with. God must cut that off. So now
there are two things before us to which our eyes must be opened. On the one
hand God is seeking to bring us to the place where we live by the life of His
Son. On the other hand He is doing a direct work in our hearts to undo that
other natural resource that is the result of the fruit of knowledge. Every day
we are learning these two lessons: a rising up of the life of this One, and a
checking and a handing over to death of that other soul-life. These two
processes go on all the time, for God is seeking the fully developed life of
His Son in us in order to manifest Himself, and to that end He is bringing us
back, as to our soul, to Adam's starting-point. So Paul says: "We which live
are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus
may be manifested in our mortal flesh" (2 Cor. 4:11).
What does this mean? It simply means that I will
not take any action without relying on God. I will find no sufficiency in
myself. I will not take any step just because I have the power to do so. Even
though I have that inherited power within me, I will not use it; I will put no
reliance in myself. By taking the fruit, Adam became possessed of an inherent
power to act, but a power which played right into Satan's hands. You lose that
power to act when you come to know the Lord. The Lord cuts it off and you find
you can no longer act on your own initiative. You have to live by the life of
Another; you have to draw everything from Him.
Oh, friends, I think we all know ourselves in
measure, but many a time we do not truly tremble at ourselves. We may, in a
manner of courtesy to God, say: `If the Lord does not want it, I cannot do it',
but in reality our subconscious thought is that really we can do it quite well
ourselves, even if God does not ask us to do it nor empower us for it. Too
often we have been caused to act, to think, to decide, to have power, apart
from Him. Many of us Christians today are men with over-developed souls. We
have grown too big in ourselves. We have become `big-souled'. When we are in
that condition, the life of the Son of God in us is confined and almost crowded
out of action.
Natural Energy In The Work Of God
The power, the energy of the soul is present
with us all. Those who have been taught by the Lord repudiate that principle
as a life principle; they refuse to live by it; they will not let it reign, nor
allow it to be the power-spring of the work of God. But those who have not
been taught of God rely upon it; they utilize it; they think it is the
power.
Let us take first an obvious illustration of
this. Far too many of us in the past have reasoned as follows. Here is a
delightfully good-natured man, with a clear brain, splendid managing powers and
sound judgment. In our hearts we say, `If that man could be a Christian, what
an asset he would be to the Church! If only he were the Lord's, what a lot it
would mean to His cause!'
But think for a moment. Where did that man's
good nature come from? Whence are those splendid managing powers and that good
judgment? Not form new birth, for he is not yet born again. We know we have
all been born of the flesh; therefore we need a new birth. But the Lord Jesus
had something to say about this in John 3:6: "That which is born of the flesh
is flesh". Everything which comes not by new birth but my natural birth is
flesh and will only bring glory to man, not God. That statement is not very
palatable, but it is true.
We have spoken of soul-power or natural energy.
What is this natural energy? It is simply what I can do, what I
am of myself, what I have inherited of natural gifts and resources.
We are none of us without the power of the soul, and our first need is to
recognize it for what it is.
Take for example the human mind. I may have by
nature a keen mind. Before my new birth I had it naturally, as something
developed from my natural birth. But the trouble arises here. I become
converted, I am born anew, a deep work is effected in my spirit, and essential
union with God that has been set up in my spirit, but at the same time I carry
over with me something which I derive from my natural birth. Now what am I
going to do about it?
The natural tendency is this. Formerly I used to
use my mind to pore over history, over business, over chemistry, over questions
of the world, or literature, or poetry. I used my keen mind to get the best
out of those studies. But now my desire has been changed, so henceforth I
employ the same mind in the things of God. I have therefore changed my
subject of interest, but I have not changed my method of working. That is
the whole point. My interests have been utterly changed (praise God for
that!), but now I utilize the same power to study Corinthians and Ephesians
that I used before to pursue history and geography. But that power is not of
God; and God will not allow that. The trouble with so many of us is that we
have changed the channel into which our energies are directed, but we have not
changed the source of those energies.
You will find there are many such things which we
carry over into the service of God. Consider the matter of eloquence. There
are some men who are born orators; they can present a case very convincingly
indeed. Then they become converted, and, without asking ourselves where they
really stand in relation to spiritual things, we put them on the platform and
make preachers of them. We encourage them to use their natural powers for
preaching, and again it is a change of subject but the same power. We forget
that, in the matter of our resource for handling the things of God, it is a
question not of comparative value but of origin -- of where the resource
springs from. It is not so much a matter of what we are doing, but of what
powers we are employing to do it. We think too little of the source of our
energy and too much of the end to which it is directed, forgetting that with
God the end never justifies the means.
The following hypothetical case will help us to
test the truth of our argument. Mr. A. is a very good speaker: he can talk
fluently and most convincingly on any subject, but in practical things he is a
very bad manager. Mr. B., on the other hand, is a poor speaker: he cannot
express himself clearly but wanders all round his subject, never coming to a
point; yet on the other hand he is a splendid manager, most competent in all
matters of business. Both these men get converted, and both become earnest
Christians. Let us suppose now that I call on them both and ask them to speak
at a convention, and that both accept.
Now what will happen? I have asked the self-same
thing of both men, but who do you think will pray the harder? Certainly Mr. B.
Why? Because he is no speaker. In the matter of eloquence he has no resources
of his own to depend upon. He will pray: `Lord, if you do not give me power
for this, I cannot do it'. Of course Mr. A. will pray too, but maybe not in
the same way as Mr. B. because he has something of natural resource upon which
to rely.
Now let us suppose that, instead of asking them
to speak, I ask them both to take charge of the practical side of affairs at
the convention. What will happen? The position will be exactly reversed. Now
it will be Mr. A.'s turn to pray hard, for he knows full well that he has no
organizing ability. Br. B. of course will pray too, but perhaps without quite
the same urgency, for though he knows his need of the Lord he is not nearly so
conscious of his need in business matters as is Mr. A.
Do you see the difference between natural and
spiritual gifts? Anything we can do without prayer and without an utter
dependence upon God must come from that spring of natural life, and is
suspect. We must see this clearly. Of course it is not true that those only
are suited for a particular work who lack the natural gift for it. The point
is that, whether naturally gifted or not, they must know the touch of the Cross
in death upon all that is of nature, and their complete dependence upon the God
of resurrection. All too readily do we envy our neighbor who has some
outstanding natural gift, and fail to realize that our own possession of it,
apart from such a working of the Cross, may easily prove a barrier to the very
thing that God is seeking to manifest in us.
Shortly after my conversion I went out preaching
in the villages. I had had a good education and was well versed in the
Scriptures, so I considered myself thoroughly capable of instructing the
village folk, among whom were quite a number of illiterate women. But after
several visits I discovered that, despite their illiteracy, those women hand an
intimate knowledge of the Lord. I knew the Book they haltingly read; they knew
the One of whom the Book spoke. I had much in the flesh; they had much in the
Spirit. How many Christian teachers today are teaching others as I was then,
very largely in the strength of their carnal equipment!
Once I met a young brother -- young, that is to
say, in years, but who had learned a good deal of the Lord. The Lord had
brought him through much tribulation to gain that knowledge of Himself. As I
was talking to him I said, `Brother, what has the Lord really been teaching you
these days?' He said, `Only one thing: that I can do nothing apart from him.'
`Do you really mean', I said, `that you can do nothing?' `Well, no', he
replied. `I can do many things! In fact that has been just my trouble.
Oh, you know, I have always been so confident in myself. I know I am well able
to do lots of things.' So I asked, `What then do you mean when you say you can
do nothing apart from Him?' He answered, `The Lord has shown me that I
can do anything, but that He has said, "Apart from me ye can do
nothing". So it comes to this, that everything I have done and can do apart
from Him is nothing!'
We have to come to that valuation. I do not mean
to say we cannot do a lot of things, for we can. We can take meetings, and
build churches, we can go to the ends of the earth and found missions, and we
can seem to bear fruit; but remember that the Lord's word is: "Every plant
which my heavenly Father planted not, shall be rooted up" (Matt. 15:13). God
is the only legitimate Originator in the universe (Gen. 1:1). Anything that
you plan and set on foot has its origin in the flesh, and it will never
reach the realm of the Spirit however earnestly you seek God's blessing on it.
It may last for years, and then you may think you will adjust here and improve
there and maybe bring it on a better plane, but it cannot be done.
Origin determines destination, and what was "of
the flesh" originally will never be made spiritual by any amount of
`improvement'. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and it will never be
otherwise. Anything for which we are sufficient in ourselves is `nothing' in
God's estimate, and we have to accept His estimate and write it down as
nothing. "The flesh profiteth nothing." It is only what comes from above that
will abide.
We cannot see this simply by being told it. God
must teach us what is meant, by putting His finger on something which He sees
and saying: `This is natural; this has its source in the old creation; this
cannot abide.' Until He does so, we may agree in principle but we can never
really see it. We may assent to, and even enjoy, the teaching, but we
shall never truly loathe ourselves.
But there will come a day when God opens our
eyes. Facing a particular issue we shall have to say, as by revelation: `It is
unclean, it is impure; Lord, I see it!' The word `purity' is a blessed word.
I always associate it with the Spirit. Purity means something altogether of
the Spirit. Impurity means mixture. When God opens our eyes to see that the
natural life is something He can never use in His work, then we find we do not
enjoy the doctrine any longer. Rather we loathe ourselves for the
impurity that is in us; but when that point is reached, God begins His work of
deliverance. We are going on shortly to look at the provision He has made for
that deliverance, but we must stay for a little longer with this matter of
revelation.
The Light Of God And Knowledge
Of course, if one does not set out to serve
the Lord whole-heartedly, one does not feel the necessity for light. It is
only when one has been apprehended by God, and seeks to go forward with Him,
that one finds how necessary light is. There is a fundamental need of light in
order for us to know the mind of God; to know what is of the spirit and what is
of the soul; to know what is Divine and what is merely of man; to discern what
is truly heavenly and what is only earthly; to understand the difference
between things which are spiritual and things which are carnal; to know whether
God is really leading us or whether we are walking by our feelings, senses or
imaginations. It is when we have reached a position where we would like to
follow God fully that we find light to be the most necessary thing in the
Christian life.
In my conversations with younger brothers and
sisters one question comes up again and again. It is: How can I know that I
am walking in the Spirit? How do I distinguish which prompting within me is
from the Holy Spirit and which is from myself? It seems that all are alike in
this; but some have gone further. They are trying to look within, to
differentiate, to discriminate to analyze, and in doing so are bringing
themselves into deeper bondage. Now this is a situation which is really
dangerous to Christian life, for inward knowledge will never be reached along
the barren path of self-analysis.
We are never told in the Word of God to examine
our inward condition.[15] That way ends only to uncertainty, vacillation and
despair. Of course we have to have self-knowledge. We have to know what is
going on within. We do not want to live in a fool's paradise; to have gone
altogether wrong and yet not know we have gone wrong; to have a spartan will
and yet think we are pursuing the will of God. But such self-knowledge does
not come by our turning within; by our analyzing our feelings and motives and
everything that is going on inside, and then trying to pronounce whether we are
walking in the flesh or in the Spirit.
There are several passages in the Psalms which
illumine this subject. The first is in Psalm 36:9: "In thy light shall we see
light". I think that is one of the best verses in the old Testament. There
are two lights there. There is "thy light", and then , when we have come into
that light, we shall "see light".
Now those two lights are different. We might say
that the first is objective and the second subjective. The first light is the
light which belongs to God but is shed upon us; the second is the knowledge
imparted by that light. "In thy light shall we see light": we shall know
something; we shall be clear about something; we shall see. No turning
within, no introspective self-examination will ever bring us to that clear
place. No, it is when there is light coming from God that we see.
I think it is so simple. If we want to satisfy
ourselves that our face is clean, what do we do? Do we feel it carefully all
over with our hands? No, of course not. We find a mirror and we bring it to
the light. In that light everything becomes clear. No sight ever came by
feeling or analyzing. Sight only comes by the light of God coming in; and when
once it has come, there is no loner need to ask if a thing is right or wrong.
We know.
You remember again how in Psalm 139:23 the writer
says: "Search me, O God, and know my heart". You realize, do you not, what it
means to say `Search me'? It certainly does not mean that I search myself.
`Search me' means `You search me!' That is the way of illumination. It
is for God to come in and search; it is not for me to search. Of course that
will never mean that I may go blindly on, careless of my true condition. That
is not the point. The point is that however much my self-examination may
reveal in me that needs putting right, such searching never really gets below
the surface. My true knowledge of self comes not from my searching myself but
from God searching me.
But, you ask, what does it mean in practice for
us to come into the light? How does it work? How do we see light in
His light? Here again the Psalmist comes to our help. "The entrance of Thy
words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple" (psalm 119:130
A.V.). In spiritual things we are all `simple'. We are dependent upon God to
give us understanding, and especially is this so in the matter of our own true
nature. And it is here that the Word of God operates. In the New Testament
the passage which states this most clearly is in the Epistle to the Hebrews:
"The word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword,
and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and
marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there
is no creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and
laid open before the eyes of him with whom we have to do" (Heb. 4:12,13). Yes,
it is the Word of God, the penetrating Scripture of Truth, that settles our
questions. It is that which discerns our motives and defines for us their true
source in soul or spirit.
With this I think we can pass on from the
doctrinal to the practical side of things. Many of us, I am sure, are living
quite honestly before God. We have been making progress, and we do not know of
anything much wrong with us. Then one day, as we go on, we meet with a
fulfillment of that word: "The entrance of Thy words giveth light". Some
servant of God has been used by Him to confront us with His living Word, and
that Word has made an entrance into us. Or perhaps we ourselves have been
waiting before God and, whether from our memory of Scripture or from the page
itself, His Word has come to us in power. Then it is we see something which we
have never seen before. We are convicted. We know where we are wrong, and we
look up and confess: `Lord, I see it. There is impurity there. There is
mixture. How blind I was ! Just fancy that for so many years I have been
wrong there and have never known it!' Light comes in and we see light. The
light of God brings us to see the light concerning ourselves, and it is an
abiding principle that every knowledge of self comes to us in that way.
It may not always be the Scriptures. Some of us
have known saints who really knew the Lord, and through praying with them or
talking with them, in the light of God radiating from them, we have seen
something which we never say before. I have met one such, who is now with the
Lord, and I always think of her as a `lighted' Christian. If I did but walk
into her room, I was brought immediately to a sense of God. In those days I
was very young and had been converted about two years, and I had lots of plans,
lots of beautiful thoughts, lots of schemes for the Lord to sanction, a hundred
and lone things which I thought would be marvelous if they were all brought to
fruition. With all these things I came to her to try to persuade her; to tell
her that this or that was the thing to do.
Before I could open my mouth she would just say a
few words in quite an ordinary way. Light dawned! It simply put me to shame.
My `doing' was all so natural, so full of man. Something happened. I was
brought to a place where I could say: `Lord, my mind is set only in creaturely
activities, but here is someone who is not out for them at all'. She had but
one motive, one desire, and that was for God. Written in the front of her
Bible were these words: `Lord, I want nothing for myself', Yes, she lived for
God alone, and where that is the case you will find that such a one is bathed
in light, and that that light illuminates others. That is real witness.[16]
Light has one law: it shines wherever it is
admitted. That is the only requirement. We may shut it out of
ourselves; it fears nothing else. If we throw ourselves open to God, He will
reveal. The trouble comes when we have closed areas, locked and barred places
in our hearts, where we think with pride that we are right. Our defeat
lies then not only in our being wrong but in our not knowing that we are
wrong. Wrong may be a question of natural strength; ignorance of it is a
question of light. You can see the natural strength in some but they cannot
see it themselves. Oh, we need to be sincere and humble, and to open ourselves
before God! Those who are open can see. God is light, and we cannot
live in His light and be without understanding. Let us say again with the
Psalmist: "O send out Thy light and Thy truth: let them lead me" (Psalm
43:3).
We praise God that sin is being brought to the
notice of Christians today more than hitherto. In many places the eyes of
Christians have been opened to see that victory over sins, as items, is
important in Christian life, and in consequence many are walking closer to the
Lord in seeking deliverance and victory over them. Praise the Lord for any
movement toward Himself, any movement back to real holiness unto God! But that
is not enough. There is one thing that must be touched, and that is the very
life of the man, not merely his sins. The question of the personality of the
man, of his soul-power, is the heart of the matter. To make the question of
sins to be everything is still to be on the surface. Holiness, if you only
regard sins, is still something on the outside, still superficial. You have
not yet got to the root of the evil.
Adam did not let sin into the world by committing
murder. That came later. Adam let in sin by choosing to have his soul
developed to a place where he cold go on by himself apart from God. When,
therefore, God secures a race of men who will be to His glory, and who will be
His instrument to accomplish His purpose in the universe, they will be a people
whose life -- yea, whose very breath -- is dependent upon Him. He will be the
"tree of life" to them.
What I feel more and more the need of in myself,
and what I feel that we all as the Lord's children need to seek from God, is a
real revelation of ourselves. I repeat that I do not mean we should be for
ever looking in on ourselves and asking: `Now, is this soul or is it spirit?'
That will never get us anywhere; it is darkness. No, Scripture shows us how
the saints were brought to self-knowledge. It was always by light from God,
and that light is God Himself. Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Peter, Paul,
John, all came to a knowledge of themselves because the Lord flashed
Himself upon them, and that flash brought revelation and conviction.
(Isa. 6:5; Ezek. 1:28; Dan. 10:8; Luke 22:61, 62; Acts 9:3-5; Rev. 1:17).
We can never know the hatefulness of sin and the
hatefulness of ourselves unless there is that flash of God upon us. I speak
not of a sensation but of an inward revelation of the Lord Himself through His
Word. It does for us what doctrine alone can never do.
Christ is our light. He is the living Word, and
when we read the Scriptures that life in Him brings revelation. "The life was
the light of men" (John 1:4). Such illumination may not come to us all at
once, but gradually; but it will be more and more clear and searching, until we
see ourselves in the light of god and all our self-confidence is gone. For
light is the purest thing in the world. It cleanses. It sterilizes. It kills
what should not be there. In its radiance the `dividing asunder of joints and
marrow' becomes to us a fact and no mere teaching. We know fear and trembling
as we recognize the corruption of man's nature, the hatefulness of our own
selves, and the real threat to the work of God of our unrestrained soul-life
and energy. As never before, we wee now how much of us needs God's drastic
dealing if He is to use us, and we know that, apart from Him, as servants of
God we are finished.
But here the Cross, in its widest meaning, will
come to our help again, and we shall seek now to examine an aspect of its work
which meets and deals with our problem of the human soul. For only a thorough
understanding of the Cross can bring us to that place of dependence which the
Lord Jesus Himself voluntarily took when He said: "I can of myself do nothing:
as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is righteous; because I seek not mine own
will, but the will of him that sent me" (John 5:30).